Saturday, September 30, 2017

Excuse me, Mr.
President but your Saturday morning tantrum tweet storm this morning attacking
the mayor of San Juan, a fellow American citizen dealing with a real-time life
and death struggle for hundreds of thousands of her constituents on an island
of millions in crisis, is not only far below the dignity of the office you
hold. It fails even the most basic test of humanity.

Did she have harsh
words for your Administration's response to the aftermath of Hurricane Maria?
Yes.

It's called a reality
check, and one that conforms to every firsthand account coming out of Puerto
Rico no matter how much you try to deflect with your "Fake News"
epithets.

To take this
personally is to put ego before country.

And you also blame the
Puerto Ricans themselves? That they want "everything done for them"?
No. They just expect to be treated as any other American would.

September
15 marks the unofficial turning point in Arctic ice cover— the time when the
ice reaches its low before firming up for the winter.

This
past year continued a trend of ice cover decline. The good news about the bad
news: NASA's
"Global Climate Change" webpage has a time-lapse of
the stunning changes in Arctic ice cover from 1979 to 2016.

The
site shows a stark decline in ice cover in each September from 1979 to last
year in time-lapse video format.

The bad news about the bad news: The
can't-miss website hasn’t been updated in 2017.

A new Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday shows that a majority of Americans believe
Donald Trump is "unfit to serve" as commander-in-chief and head of
the nation's executive branch.

"With an approval rating frozen in the mid-thirties, his
character and judgment questioned, President Donald Trump must confront the
harsh fact that the majority of American voters feel he is simply unfit to
serve in the highest office in the land." —Tim Malloy, Quinnipiac

Alongside an overall disapproval rating of 57 percent (with only
36 approving of his job performance), the survey revealed that by a 56 percent
believe Trump does not have what it takes to be a good president, while only 42
percent think he does.

The Narragansett Indian
Tribe and Benn Water of Hopkinton will be paid by
Invenergy Thermal Development LLC to serve as standby water supplies. Benn
Water, a pool-filling company, has already been named as the primary water
delivery company.

John Brown, Narragansett
Indian Tribe medicine man, gave ecoRI News a list of reasons for agreeing to
work with what could be one of the biggest polluters in the state.

Brown said
he was impressed that Invenergy invited the tribe to survey the 105-acre site
for Native American artifacts. Brown also claimed that the proposed Clear River
Energy Center is necessary to keep the electric grid running.

“Until there are viable
energy sources, you have the system that you have,” Brown said.

He also noted that the
tribe is an insignificant piece in a much larger project and, therefore, sees
no harm in accepting money from the Chicago-based company.

“It doesn’t start with
us or end with us,” Brown said. “What would you have us do, do nothing?”

EDITOR'S NOTE: As of this posting at midnight Friday, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance made any statement. The CCA did post this EcoRI article on their website. The Westerly Sun will run its first story in tomorrow's newspaper. - W. Collette

For many years, genetically engineered crops were said to be
environmentally responsible.

Those crops have genes from different species implanted in them,
giving them traits they normally wouldn’t have. Companies like Monsanto that
produced such strains claimed they were good for the planet.

One genetically engineered crop variety is specifically designed
to withstand exposure to Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, which Monsanto claimed
broke down quickly in the soil.

With these “Roundup Ready” crops, farmers can spray their entire
fields with Roundup, trusting that their crops will live and the weeds will
die.

Monsanto said it was safe. Why? Because Roundup was safe.

Some contest the claim that Roundup is actually safe. California
lists it as a carcinogen,so maybe it isn’t.

Another Monsanto product, Xtend, uses a different herbicide —
dicamba — that inspires no such debate. It’s bad for you.

Trump’s muted response to the disastrous effects wrought on the
island of Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria is puzzling, with two popular
speculated explanations: either Trump doesn’t know that Puerto Ricans are
American citizens, or he doesn’t care about them because he’s an avowed white
supremacist. Of course, it could be a mix of the two.

Now, another explanation for Trump’s weak
Puerto Rican relief efforts has surfaced. Death and Taxes Magazine reports that Trump tried and failed
to launch one of his gaudy golf courses on the island territory.

The Trump International
Golf Club Puerto Rico borrowed $26.4 million in government-backed bonds for
renovations but later defaulted on $119,814 to the bondholders. When the golf
course went bankrupt, Trump tried to distance himself from the failed endeavor,
which he had licensed his name to and made hundreds of thousands of dollars
off.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Well, now Charlestown has some skin in the anti-power plant movement
By Will Collette

According to the Providence Journal, the deeply unpopular Invenergy proposal to build a big natural gas power plant in Burrillville just signed up Narragansett Indian Tribe as a source for required back-up water.The ProJo also reports that local water delivery service, Benn Water, would deliver the water. That's water pumped inside tribal land from the aquifer that provides just about all of us with our drinking water. It would be shipped via tanker truck from one end of the state to the other.The ProJo posted the story on-line this afternoon.Is this true? And if so, what happens next?I'll venture one prediction: Charlestown is about undergo a Category 5 shit-storm.The phone lines have probably already started burning up between Town Hall and Charlestown's special anti-Narragansett lawyer Joe Larisa. There's probably a late-night meeting going on at the CCA clubhouse.The town pays Larisa almost $25,000 a year just to watch the Tribe and to block anything the Tribe might do. CLICK HERE for Larisa's most recent 6-month billing.I'm surprised Larisa didn't see this coming since Charlestown pays him to keep his eyes on the Tribe. If this matter goes to court, his retainer contract with the town calls for Larisa to be paid extra. Beyond these predictions, we have a ton of very large "Ifs."

At this year’s Empty Bowls fundraiser, you can enjoy tastings
from more than 30 local restaurants like Chapel Grille, The Salted Slate, and
Two Ten Oyster Bar. You’ll also choose a handcrafted artisanal bowl to take
home as a reminder that your support helps fill all the empty bowls in our
community. Please join us on Friday, October 13 at Rhodes on the Pawtuxet for
this fun, family-friendly event.

Empty Bowls Collector’s Corner -
Shop Online

In addition to the
handmade bowl every guest receives at our Empty Bowls event, a selection of
unique artisanal bowls will be available for sale. Bowls were contributed by
Rhode Island artists such as Tracy Glover Studio, Anna Galloway Highsmith,
Peàn Doubulyu, John Fazzino and many more. Sales benefit the Food Bank.
Pieces can be purchased in advance by calling 401-230-1678.

Turns out most of the senior Trumpsters - including Ivanka (notpictured) have been using private email for government business.Weren't these the guys who wanted to lock up Hillary for her privatee-mail?

In a stunning display of hypocrisy from Donald Trump’s inner
circle, son-in-law and presidential advisor Jared Kushner was just discovered
to have been using a private email server to conduct White House business.

POLITICO has “seen and verified” over a dozen
emails from Kushner’s private email account to other “senior White House
officials, outside advisers and others about media coverage, event planning and
other subjects.”

Those officials and
advisors include senior White House staff like former
chief of staff Reince Priebus, former chief strategist Steve Bannon, Gary Cohn,
and spokesman Josh Raffel, indicating that serious business and potentially
classified information was being discussed in these emails.

This normally wouldn’t be a big deal, but Donald Trump made the
issue of Hillary Clinton’s private email server that she used in her time as
Secretary of State one of the central platforms of his campaign, demanding that
she be arrested and tried for her potential mishandling of state secrets.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

When You ‘Turn To 10’By Beth Comery in the Providence Daily DoseThis erosion of the independent press is terrifying. Never has it been more important to have energetic news gatherers, with journalistic standards and integrity, keeping an eye on our elected officials. Sadly, one of our local news outlets has been compromised on all those counts, and has been presenting biased segments as if they were objective reports, or analysis. Channel 10 News is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group and, as such, is now a propaganda arm of the Trump White House. The Providence Journal writes,The company that owns WJAR-TV is mandating the broadcast of multiple programs favorable to President Donald Trump on the state’s most-watched television station.Sinclair Broadcast Group, a rapidly growing media company that bought Channel 10 in 2014, produces “must-run” segments and distributes them to its local stations nationwide. They must air during daily news programming, Sinclair executives said.

The
General Assembly’s weeklong bonus session saw the passage of several
environmental bills that were nearly approved in June. Here’s what passed last
week:

Safe furniture H5082: For years, the chemical
industry fought the removal of flame retardants and toxic chemicals from
furniture and children’s products such as clothing. But Rhode island will ban
the manufacturing and sale of mattresses, electronics and children’s products
that exceed the allowance of certain chemical compounds that contain bromide, which is linked to cancer and harmful
to fetal and child development. The law takes effect July 1, 2019. Watch video
testimony of the Senate hearing here.

Geoengineering H6011: Theories abound
about chemical engineering of the atmosphere and the cloudy spray from
aircraft, called chemtrails. The legislation makes Rhode Island one of the
first states to study the issue. A five-member committee will make
recommendations for licensing geoengineering technologies — real or not — such
as solar radiation management, ocean fertilization, and cloud cover protection
and cloud whitening. The House commission is tasked to report its findings by
April 2, 2018.

EDITOR'S NOTE: It boggles the mind that the General Assembly passed local wingnut Rep. Justin Price's bill to "study" one of the most insane far-right conspiracy theories. The idea in a nutshell is that some sinister force is mixing chemicals into jet fuel so that their contrails disperse mind-altering substances on an unaware, innocent public. These chemicals make them do crazy things, according to the wingnut theory, such as vote for Democrats. The only evidence I see of mass lunacy is that Richmond and Hopkinton voters actually elected people like Justin Price, and I'm not sure chem-trails are to blame. But maybe that's something for this study commission to examine. - Will Collette.